The Tate Modern, London's first museum of modern art, is housed in the soaring 1940s Bankside Power Station with its majestic chimney.

It is absolutely vast, giving towering sculptures and acres of canvas the room they need to breathe. This is a gallery which works on the premise that people will not only look, but ponder, eat, drink and shop.

Those who look, will love or loathe the exhibits, which are divided into four major themes: history, memory and society; nude, action and body; landscape, matter and environment; and still life, object and real life.

Whether the objects on display fulfil these criteria is often difficult to say there are all the bricks, the piles of rubbish, the obscenities, the apparent lack of any technical skill that make the critics of conceptual art rant and rave and the main question that keeps springing to mind is: "is this really art?"

Perhaps I missed the point, but coming across Rodin's 'The Kiss' at the top of an escalator, I was almost moved to embrace the couple.

Being a cleaner here must be fraught with problems. How is the Tate Modern daily supposed to know whether the bin-full of rubbish by the towering concrete column is really a bin-full of rubbish or an important work of art? Great caf, though, and a panoramic view of St Paul's through the huge windows.

Once you've seen London from the past at the V&A, and from a weird but rather intriguing present at the Tate Modern, you can take a look at it from above.

It's a short hop from the Modern to the London Eye. Don't bother booking as you'll have to queue for your tickets anyway, and give it a miss if you don't have a head for heights.

The egg-shaped vessels into which the Eye-riders pour leave you feeling very vulnerable at 450ft above the Thames.

The view, though, even from behind clenched fingers, is stupendous.